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An Optimism: Poems
Here is collection of poems about finding oneself in a life--an ordinary life that one could not have imagined--and making the decision to live it. Against our terribly ambivalent present--in which Black, trans, and other minoritized forms of life seem at once more possible than ever and, also, relentlessly under attack--An Optimism gives us poems in search of ways to survive--and even thrive. Anchored by an epistolary sequence directed to the 20th century poet and activist Pauli Murray, and looking to the work of other trans, queer, and black feminist writers like Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and June Jordan for company and counsel, Cameron Awkward-Rich situate us in spaces intimate and capacious, from lovers' beds to the Gamma Quadrant across the Milky Way. Although it speaks resolutely and intimately from a particular "I", An Optimism turns to the creativity of the motley we to, in Hortense Spillers' words, make "a space for living." These are poems for the living, infused with hope and ancestral wisdom.
Book Details
- Publisher: Persea Books
- Publish Date: Oct 7th, 2025
- Pages: 112
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.50in - 0.45lb
- EAN: 9780892556212
- Categories: • American - African American & Black• LGBTQ+
About the Author
Awkward-Rich, Cameron: - Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His creative work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation. Also a scholar of trans theory and expressive culture in the U.S., Cameron earned his PhD from Stanford University's program in Modern Thought & Literature. His more critical writing can be found in Signs, Trans Studies Quarterly, American Quarterly and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from Duke University's Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the ACLS. His book The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment was published by Duke University Press in Fall 2022. Presently, he is an associate professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Praise for this book
"Here in this, another, century of wildfire, century of war, when America is more and less itself/than ever, Cameron Awkward-Rich "know[s] all the arguments for/and against [his] life." But An Optimism doesn't show, tell, or try to teach us how to be present to ourselves and this moment. Instead, we are brought, blessedly, into the interior of experience - an assembly of love which includes history, nature, the body, and the mind. This is a book that un-mutes possibility. Re-imagines time. It is our luck that we live now and inside this life, get to listen. Here the sprawl of blackness is reflected across the tenses--a trans pastoral revelation - the beautiful thought: you, you. Alive, alive, alive."--TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania and The Quiet Practices
Expansive and introspective, this collection offers a rich portrait of Black trans life during a dangerous political moment. Weaving together past and present, Awkward-Rich celebrates the imagination of Black activists and thinkers. Marked by its hopefulness for the possibility of self-actualization, this is a generous and revelatory volume.-- "Publishers Weekly"